Recognize that healthcare requires us to lookout for one another, pooling resources in one form or another.

But we live in a highly dysfunctional society and I don't see that sort of shift in consciousness happening any time soon.

In order for that shift to occur we need to ask the fundamental question " Why do people come together to form a society?" There are those for whom the reason is obviously so they have a ready pool on which to feed and to send off to fight their wars. We may need to look to other species to get a clear answer; if you look at bees or wolves or any other species in it's natural environment, it is just what Lazarus stated: to look out for one another . No other species feeds off it's members.

People definitely should look out for one another, in healthcare and in a lot of other areas. Government isn't required for that, though.

Off topic question (the whole "looking out for other people" line got me thinking), but if you had about $500, what type of charity, or charities, would be most deserving? Anybody can answer.

In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock.

This message has been intercepted by the NSA, the only branch of government that listens.

Right, but when does looking out for each other mean letting someone die? The weak and sick animal in a herd looks out for the others by being easy prey for the lion (perhaps not intentionally but it does work). As the good doctor said 60% of healthcare money goes to treat people who are not leaving the hospital (they are not getting better). I also heard an interview with a doctor that said about how much we spend just keeping people alive a few more days. His contention was that it was not cost effective or worth it. Let them die a week earlier and save several hundred thousand. They are going to die anyway.

I'm not talking about not paying for lifesaving surgeries or denying people who will get well care, but at what point do we say, "The best way we can look out for each other is for you to be allowed to go. We'll miss you."?

edit: the so called death panel idea.

This is definitely a complicated and nuanced ethical issue, one in which profit needs to be taken out of the equation. As long as there is money to be made the answer will be obscured.

Life is death. We all take turns. It's sacred to eat during our turn and be eaten when our turn is over. RichMahogany.

Right, but when does looking out for each other mean letting someone die?

I think the hard thing is that we don't know when someone has no quality of life left. Last year, my dad was on a feeding tube, out of it mentally, in a bed in a "facility" and my wish was that he would die soon instead of suffering. It took a lot of money and pain on his part but now he is back home, eating some foods, enjoying his grand kids and has a decent quality of life.

Yeah, you're not always in all cases sure if it's the end of someone's life. But if you are, I think the best thing is to die at home. That's how it used to be done and how it's still done when people have loved ones who know that is what you want. But you really have to argue pretty hard to allow someone to die at home. When my grandmother was dying my mother took her home from the hospital so she could die at home. She faced a LOT of wrath from the people at church. It was really awful. She cried daily about it, wondering if she made the right decision. But it's what her mother wanted and so she held her ground, but she was all alone with her grief.

Off topic question (the whole "looking out for other people" line got me thinking), but if you had about $500, what type of charity, or charities, would be most deserving? Anybody can answer.

I would not actually donate to any charitable organization specifically. I don't trust that they get the money to the areas of need that I would choose. Part of the reason I don't donate to cancer and heart associations is that I don't believe they are putting the money into the area I'm most supportive of furthering (prevention via holistic principles). Personally I would go for something like buying turkey dinners for 5-10 families or something like that.

Speaking as a Canadian, it seems to me that Obamacare is just a tax that's being framed as something other than a tax.

In Canada, we pay far more income tax and other tax than in the States. One of the main things we get out of it is state run health care. It seems to me that the US government is trying to institute something similar, but in a completely half-assed way. No one wants to have their taxes raised to pay for health care, but everyone is ENTITLED to health care, right? So make everyone get insurance! Of course then the people who make more or who aren't sick will have to pay more for the people who are sick... so it might as well be a tax. It's just not called a tax. That's just my take on it though. I honestly don't much care since it doesn't affect me at all...

Wildrose has a point, and I have learned a lot after visiting Canada and getting to know the system there as opposed to in the USA. Everyone says the USA has a great system, but consider this: The USA spends more tax dollars than any other country on healthcare, and yet not everyone is covered. This makes no sense. Where is this money going? The other nations such as Canada with a "socialist" medicine cover everyone. Even worse, when you factor in all of our taxes, fees and regulations in the USA, we pay a comparable amount in taxes to Canada and other nations that have "socialist" medicine. And on top of that, those of us with health insurance have to pay premiums. I have estimated that in the last 20 years I have paid close to $80k in premiums alone, while many people I know have never paid anything.

So basically, what our government is doing is taking our money, giving us nothing in return. When we ask for something in return, they say, "No, that's socialism, and that's not American. Get your own insurance and pay your own bills with what is leftover after our take."

I don't care if you are Republican, Democrat, libertarian, etc., you are giving your money away for it to be used in ways that never directly or even indirectly benefit you or your families. At least the nations with universal healthcare give something back and more in the form of real, tangible benefits.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying I am for or against universal healthcare or Obamacare. I am just against paying in and not benefiting.

So basically, what our government is doing is taking our money, giving us nothing in return.

Some people get a lot in return. I think a big difference between countries where socialism works....and the US are the number of people in the US that live in persistant poverty and don't pay in to our system. We have a bunch of people (not just elderly) that do not support themselves or make so little that they pay no taxes (beyond SS and medicaid).

I think Magnolia makes a very good point....and it is one that a lot of people on the US left do not like to hear, as much as an inconvenient reality it is. I would rank the problems with US healthcare like this:

1) "The Cost Monster", which I have laid out already.
2) Magnolia's point: there are just SO MANY sick people. By the time you add it all up, you end up with a small number of younger, healthy, employed people paying out the nose for an overwhelming number that are either too poor to afford anything, are disabled (sometimes falsely), elderly, or otherwise skip the system and end up with a 600k ER bill everyone else has to eventually pay for.
3) A completely botched end-of-life mentality. I have seen a bill for 3.4 million dollars on a patient that had NO chance of leaving, to anyone with an educated medical opinion. She was 87, in liver and renal failure, and had lost innervation out of C4. ("C-3,4, and 5.....keep the diaphragm alive, as we learned) She was never leaving. Her family refused to give in, and Medicare with her supplemental took it all....YOU ended up paying for that. This happens every day.

I think that cost could be tackled head-on, with huge gains made, but most of these counties like NZ, Canada, and the UK (becoming less so) do not have 65% of their population requiring more care than they could afford. This all goes into prevention and our entire toxic environment, which others are better at commenting about than myself.

You could almost make the point to a 3rd grader:
"Billy. See how we put ten people on this side of the room? Now, do you think those people can pay for the care of the thirty people on the other side, without the government essentially stealing it?"